


Broken Crown

by manic_intent



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Astral Plane, Chess, Chess Metaphors, I guess slight spoilers if you haven't seen the photo?, M/M, Post-XMFC, Semi-dream sex, That fic based on the Empire Magazine DOFP Chess Photo, i guess, sorry - Freeform, this is kind of a weird fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:16:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers this. </p><p>First class train carriage, on the trans-Canada route, the brass fittings and the casual luxury, the discreet, polite staff, Charles' red, pursed mouth as he surveys the wine list - <i>his</i> memory. There had only been disappointment waiting for them across the border, but the journey had been pleasant: Erik likes trains; loves the thrumming continuous sync of machine-work, the hydraulics, the metal on every side, under his palms, overhead, beneath his feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Crown

**Author's Note:**

> I still can't take James McAvoy's DOFP hair seriously, but @moleculemonster on twitter asked for a fic based on [this pic](http://www.empireonline.com/gallery/image.asp?id=76452&caption=&gallery=4854) (Note: Possible spoilers for DOFP, I guess? I'm not sure if preview stills count as spoilerish). 
> 
> Also, it was only AFTER I started writing the first couple of paragraphs that I thought to discuss whether the pic is in a plane or a train, but what the hell. lol. I've done chess fic before, for FF12 and I think a few for XMFC itself, so... hopefully no one is bored. 
> 
> As usual, my games are actually excerpts of Bobby Fischer games.

_Now in this twilight, how dare you speak of grace_  
\- Mumford  & Sons / Broken Crown

I.

He remembers this.

First class train carriage, on the trans-Canada route, the brass fittings and the casual luxury, the discreet, polite staff, Charles' red, pursed mouth as he surveys the wine list - _his_ memory. There had only been disappointment waiting for them across the border, but the journey had been pleasant: Erik likes trains; loves the thrumming continuous sync of machine-work, the hydraulics, the metal on every side, under his palms, overhead, beneath his feet. 

The carriage is empty, save for a chess set on the table, and this is new. They hadn't played chess on the way up or back from Canada, Erik recalls, as he touches his fingertips to the White King's ivory crown. Charles had been nattering on about the Civil Rights movement and American politics and as jaded as Erik was - even then - about the human system of governance, this had been a good memory. 

He sits down at white, settling his palms over the leather of the arm rests, and waits. This recreation is perfect: _too_ perfect to be just a dream, the craftsmanship exquisite down to the smallest detail of the ground shifting unevenly now and then under Erik's feet, and he knows what it is. He waits.

Charles appears in the space of a heartbeat between Erik glancing briefly out of the window at the passing conifer forests and back, upright in the opposite chair as though he's always been there. For a moment, Erik freezes, startled - it's Charles, but not Charles: the soft, red mouth he remembers is pressed thin, and his neatly combed hair has feathered wild down to his shoulders, tense and tight with chronic pain, his usually impeccable, if eccentrically dowdy clothes rumpled and loose-collared. Charles looks disarmed without his jacket and vest, unfinished with his unshaven jaw, and the red frames to his brilliant blue eyes have a touch of feverish intensity. His elegant fingers twitch against the arm rests, and he leans forward a fraction, as if to study Erik more closely, then Charles inclines his head.

When Charles speaks, it takes an effort for Erik not to startle. "Erik." His tone, unlike his appearance, is neutral. 

"Charles." Erik murmurs, and he has to take this in. He has to accept it. This is what he has done, to a better man than most, a kinder man than most, and Erik accepts it, for his sins. He's braced, heart and mind, for the first of a string of accusations, but Charles merely glances pointedly at the chess board, then back up at him, and Erik frowns, dropping his gaze. Chess? Charles called him here to play _chess_? 

The board goes unfocused at the edges, and then it's... different. White is now brass-headed, a set of heavy sculpted weights settled on thin-necked identical ivory pieces; black, on the other hand, is set with ivory heads and feet, mahogany-bodied. Erik's frown deepens a fraction, but he doesn't look up. Charles and his fucking love of symbology. 

There's a rough and wry chuckle from Charles, and it's so unsettlingly wrong that Erik nearly jerks back to defensive - but this isn't Emma's work. Emma is good, but she wouldn't have managed this level of definition, not to the tiny little scratches on the finish of the brass heads, not the detail on the conifer leaves of the trees sleeting past, or the fingers of frost creeping up outside the windows. Erik sucks in a slow and uneven breath, and moves his first pawn to e4.

Charles sucks in a slow breath, and his fingers hover briefly over his pawns before he moves his third last pawn up two squares. Erik responds by jumping a knight to f3, and Charles lets out a low and whispery laugh, like an echo in a memory corridor, and Erik thinks perhaps that he can see where this game is going, but if he must always be haunted by his mistakes, then, so be it.

It's only when Charles bloods the board - pawn to pawn - that he notes, "You're heading east."

"Opportunity." Erik takes the pawn with his knight. 

"Should I be worried?" There's an edge to Charles' tone, a reckless cynicism to it, like the first brittle crack in a porcelain finish, and it's Erik's turn to set his mouth into a thin line, as Charles pushes another pawn to e6.

"Keep to your business and I'll keep to mine." Erik advances his second knight, and now he glances up, feet braced against the rumbling ground. 

Charles' smile has none of the arrogant naivety that Erik remembers. It's rueful now, measured. It's cold, in a way. Black Queen to c7. Erik breathes in, but it's Charles who drawls, "It's the first time that you've slept without Shaw's helmet."

 _My_ helmet, Erik wants to correct, but he jumps his second last pawn up a square without touching it, instead. "I've grown surer of Miss Frost's motives."

"Miss Frost's, or mine?"

"Surely you can pick that detail out of my mind yourself."

Charles snorts. There's a blur of unreality in the corner of his board, and then the second black knight reappears on f6. "A dreamer's mind is a morass. It's enough of a struggle keeping you here."

"And where is 'here'?" Erik asks, curious, despite himself, despite the veiled threat that he thinks that he hears. He advances a knight boldly up, almost to the black ranks of pieces, to threaten Charles' Queen, and Charles smiles again, sharp, this time. Perfection, Erik thinks, all of a sudden, is beautiful only when it is sundered. 

Charles' eyebrows arch slightly, as though he hears this sentiment - perhaps he does. His Queen moves back a square, and his fingers twitch only briefly before steepling before him. "I've been experimenting with Cerebro. I call this the 'Astral Plane'. It's a... separate plane of existence, I suppose you could say."

"Dante?"

Charles' laugh, when startled, is unchanged, Erik notes. Disappointing. "No. I've been studying some theosophical literature in my spare time, but it's quite different. Suffice to say, memory is shaped more easily here, even across distance." 

Erik makes a mental note to talk to Frost about it, even as he moves a bishop forward to f4. "And why have you drawn me here?"

"I suppose," Charles notes candidly, and again there's a ruefulness to his tone, "That I've missed you, after all."

Erik grits his teeth - despite everything, the wry note to Charles' voice irks him. "What happened to you was an accident."

"The bullet was an accident," Charles corrects, and his fingers curl back down over the armrests. The hunger in Charles that Erik has always sensed is open now, like a raw wound; and in a way, now, they are more alike than they have ever been. The world has always been present to temper Erik's expectations: now, it has begun with Charles. A black knight jumps to e5. "But your betrayal was no accident."

Erik pushes his other bishop to e2, and his nod is slow, neat. "Shaw had to die."

"I _held him still_ for you."

"I know."

"I felt him die," Charles murmurs, and it was more than that. Charles, too, had died. This is another Charles; a version that Erik had known only onwards on the beach - the Charles whom Erik had met last in the actual version of this carriage had died with Shaw in the wreck. 

"I know."

Charles' eyes blaze for a moment, and Erik's next breath shakes in his lungs. Yes. They play in silence, quick and brutal, and in the end, Erik wins, with a Queen sacrifice; he sweeps all of Charles' pawns from the board but for his King and Queen. Charles smiles his rueful smile, and Erik grits his teeth; the cross on the crown of his King, closest to him, warps, and then he's awake, wide-eyed and disoriented, tangled up in bed in a nameless hotel. He lets out the breath that he hasn't realized that he's holding, and thinks, in the sudden silence of his mind, _Charles_? 

There's no answer - not that Erik had been expecting one - and he fumbles over for the side table, sliding his fingers over the polished faceguard of the helmet, his heartbeat slowing.

II.

He remembers this.

First class cabin, a plane, commercial flight, en-route southwards in a quick skip from San Francisco to Arizona. He remembers his quiet contempt for luxury, Charles' amusement, the cramped seats, even in first class; the way their knees had pressed together intimately under the table they had set for chess, ankles touching. The chessboard is still there, reset, bronze-headed white, two-colour black. Erik shrugs, to himself, and seats himself at white again. 

They're in the air, and it's dark out, through the half-drawn heavy curtains. Erik feels rather than hears the constant droning hum of the plane's powerful engines, every inch of its superbly designed insulated hull, every detail of its wiring and fuselage. He's in the heart of a great machine of steel and aluminium; he feels confident and powerful and safe, even though the rational part of Erik _knows_ that he's nowhere near an aircraft right now, not truly. Perhaps this is what Charles has intended all along. Erik has to be wary, even though it's been days since Charles has touched his mind since the last. 

Charles is abruptly there, between one heartbeat and the next, again red-eyed and rumpled, facing him at black, and when Erik starts the same way, pawn to e4, he chuckles. "Again?"

There's an empty bottle of whisky now, sitting next to the board, propped against the windowshelf. Erik frowns at it, even as he retorts, "It worked the last time."

"Ah," Charles notes, and he sounds amused, although he isn't smiling, and this annoys Erik: he scowls as they play through an identical series of opening moves, up until he decides to move a pawn up to d3, building a brief, diagonal wall of pawns. 

"You can't hide your school forever," Erik says, as Charles studies the game with evident incuriosity before moving a knight up to c6. 

"I don't need to hide it forever, Erik," Charles points out, and nods when Erik moves his second last pawn up a square. It's patronising, and irritating, but even when Erik scowls, Charles sighs, slow and soft as though engaging with an elegant impossibility, and Erik arches an eyebrow. "Only until it can protect itself."

"You'll lose students."

"So will you."

"I'm not recruiting students."

"Oh," Charles says wryly, and this is the first sign of sadness in Charles, in the faint downturn to his plush mouth, though it doesn't reach his eyes. "Oh, I know." Charles' second knight jumps forward. Erik exhales slowly, struggling for patience. He's been operating on low sleep for days, chasing up the rumour of a promising recruit while trying to keep off-radar. It's not that they can't handle official attention: it's just inconvenient when trying to do a search for a single person at the same time. 

He moves his right bishop up a square, and Charles adds, even as he moves his own bishop to e7, "You won't find anyone in Nevada."

"Oh?"

"It's a CIA trap. Not set for you, but you're quite close to springing it." 

"If not me, then-"

"There are other wolves in this world," Charles cuts in, and he's tired, Erik observes: more tired than before. That's interesting. 

He castles. "Concerned?"

"That you'll be wasting everyone's time? Perhaps." Charles mirrors his move, and his smile grows sharp again. Erik sucks in an irritable breath, and attacks, gradually strengthening his position with small advantages, taking and holding the centre of the board and finally checkmating Charles with a bishop and his Queen. Erik smirks, sitting back, even as Charles purses his lips in a look that is so familiar that Erik's brief sense of triumph fades quickly to bitterness. 

"This did not have to end this way," Erik says, finally, the first time that he had voiced this sentiment, in his mind and without. "Did it?" he asks harshly, when Charles doesn't answer.

The pieces rearrange themselves on the board, and Charles smiles over the bronze and ivory tips; Erik remembers the secretive twist to it, the plush curve, but there's no playfulness to Charles now, only purpose, recast down the cracks. "Oh, my friend," Charles says carelessly, "I think you know the answer to that." 

He wakes to the faint hint of pressure against his lips. It's maddening.

III.

He _doesn't_ remember this.

He's standing on the deck of a small white ship, probably a quarter of the size of Shaw's yacht, its lines sleek and new but unfamiliar. The ship's engine is silent, and although it starts up briefly when Erik concentrates, it falls dead again when he looks away. The sun is climbing up to its apex, but it's giving no warmth, and as Erik notes this, the cerulean blue of the sky fades to a multitude of shades of purple and a deep flush of pink, streaked with amber, and the flat glass of the sea around him is now a pale lime green. No waves push and break against the lines of the hull, and Erik frowns, running a palm over the cool steel of the rail. 

There's no chessboard today, not particularly, though the deck of the ship seems to have been burned into a chequered pattern, black patches and brown under the reclining white arches of the plastic deck chairs. Erik settles in one of them and crosses his legs, waiting.

This time, when Charles finally appears, seated primly on the chair beside Erik's, he's perfectly put together, just the way Erik remembers him: too-young, prim and neat in a suit cut a touch too old for him, a cardigan faded just a fraction too academic, his hair in short waves just to the nape of his neck. It's far more unsettling than Erik could have thought, and he fights the urge to tense up.

"This isn't one of my memories," Erik says, finally, when Charles seems content to remain silent. 

"I met a child with the ability to see across... possibilities," Charles hesitates only a fraction. "Look across parallel dimensions. This is one of her visions of us." 

"A purple sky, a green sea?"

"Her ability's uncontrolled. I think perhaps it's her subconscious, instinctively discolouring parts of her visions as though to inform her that the dimension she's looking in to is not the one she has her feet planted in." 

"Why are you showing me this?" Erik himself, Erik notes, is dressed as he used to - black turtleneck, pressed brown trousers. 

"This is where we meet in this version of a world when we kill each other," Charles notes candidly, and smiles the arrogantly innocent smile that Erik remembers, even as he sits up sharply with clenched hands. "Oh, don't worry. I don't intend to recreate the incident." 

It's not a comforting thought, still. "In the middle of nowhere? On a ship?"

"I couldn't quite glean the full nature of the circumstances. She doesn't always have audio in her visions." Charles lifts a shoulder briefly into a shrug. "You ripped part of the steel rails off and rammed it through my ribcage, just as I shut your mind down. It seemed pre-arranged." 

"Why are you showing me this?" Erik repeats, unsettled by Charles' matter-of-fact tone. 

"I suppose," Charles notes wryly, after a beat, "That I wished to... I asked her to look into a variety of dimensions. To 'practice'. Though in fact, I was curious. I wanted to see whether we had ruined what we had in every world. Whether concepts such as 'fate' or 'destiny' exist across time and alternative space." 

Charles smiles, and falls silent, like a wind-up doll that's run out of energy, and there's a faint flicker over his face, like an unfocused painting. This is a projected image of Charles, Erik decides, and it's a constructed one. "This isn't who you are now," he murmurs, and Charles blinks at him, then he bares his teeth into a mirthless smile, and his form flickers, grows thinner; the suit disappears, and the cardigan, and his shirt - cream, today - is rolled to the elbows, unbuttoned to reveal the pale arch of his neck; the beard and moustache and hair grows unnaturally quick, as though Erik is watching time in fast forward, and finally, the red rims to Charles' eyes, the hard gleam to them.

"Raven misses you," Erik notes, and it's his turn to smile mirthlessly as Charles stiffens. Across all the worlds, Erik knows now, all they can do is hurt each other. 

"Yes," Charles agrees, as though he's heard - but of course he has - and he shifts across, to sit at the edge of Erik's seat, and when he clenches his hand over Erik's wrist it's with a violence that surprises them both. Erik gets a hand up over the slender curve of Charles' shoulder and drags him down, force against force, and when they finally kiss, surrounded by the unreality of the memory of a different world, it's fierce. 

Charles' knees knock against Erik's hip as he growls, his free hand jumping restlessly up the black wool of Erik's turtleneck, fisting in the fabric around his neck, and Erik bites down on his lower lip, feels Charles spasm against him and then muffle a laugh, hard and brittle and raw; he licks into Charles' mouth and tastes whisky and ashes. They are strangers again, and this _now_ is perfect, as much as this is more of a dream than anything else, despite Charles' ability. Charles is whole here, physically, and Erik wonders briefly and viciously whether pretending to be able to walk, to stand, to clench his knees like this, straddling Erik's hips, is more addictive a drug to Charles than any chemical under the sun, and-

" _Yes_ ," Charles murmurs again, and perhaps he's answering, perhaps he isn't; he's dragging Erik's turtleneck up, the fabric snagging briefly against his elbows before Erik's caught by Charles' urgency, helping him pull off the turtleneck and toss it aside, gasping as Charles gets his cool, soft hands over Erik's skin. The buttons on Charles' shirt ping off onto the deck, and Charles laughs as he shrugs off his own ruined shirt and gets his wicked fingers on Erik's belt. 

They shuck the rest of their clothes with growing impatience, and when they're skin to skin Erik rolls them over, ignoring the groaning creak of the deck chair, leaving his mark on Charles' jaw, his neck, his red and smiling mouth; a groan is shaking through him and he can't stifle it even if he tried. He spits on his hand and grasps them both, and Charles bucks with a low purr, his head snapping briefly back, lips parted, all the more beautiful that this has to be simulated on muscle memory. In reality, Charles would feel nothing there, and as though Charles hears him, he moans, and turns his shoulder up to Erik's bite. 

Here, Erik knows, he's subject to Charles' pleasure: they stay frozen on the cusp, despite the desperate strain of his body, thrust against Charles; he buries his panting breaths against Charles' neck but he does not beg, even as the ache in his cock grows painful; even now, even here, they can do little more than hurt each other. There's an echo of betrayal still in the wide dazed blink of Charles' eyes, the clutch of his fingers over Erik's back and the bite of his nails; and it's only when Erik sweeps a palm down to the small of Charles' back and presses down does Charles whine and flush bright. A hand gropes down between them, guiding Erik down, further, between Charles' thighs, and he hesitates instinctively: no prep, no slick - but then Charles rolls his eyes and squeezes his knees over Erik's flanks, as though urging on an animal, and _ah_. Yes. Here, Charles is in nominal control of their dream. Erik sinks. 

Charles' grasp of the details is slipping. The deck isn't blackened any longer, and theirs is now the only deckchair, and it's silent and unyielding under their weight. Charles is warm and slick and tight around him until he's pushed in to the hilt, then there's a sudden and disorienting tilt to the world, as though it's all going out of focus, before he snaps back to the projection and Charles is laughing, abandoned and unashamed; sensation shifts in a jolt like lightning through Erik and he's snarling as he shifts his weight against the chair and his hands to Charles' hips and takes him, ignoring the flickers of unreality around them both as Charles struggles to hold the projected memory firm, bucking against Erik, nails digging into his back. He has his hand clenched in Charles' ridiculous long hair and he jerks hard, forcing Charles to tip up his neck to his teeth - Charles merely grins, tense with pleasure and pain.

The boat's gone now, and the ridiculous sky and sea; they're in Charles' bed back at the mansion, a ridiculous four-poster, and the room is as instantly familiar to Erik as it shouldn't be: he's never been inside it, but now he knows every detail of it, the notches on the post from an accidental drunken fall once when Charles had just finished high school, the strained curve to the old coat pole in the wardrobe, the old singe marks to the carpeting close to the bathroom from a childhood experiment with matches and oranges, of all things. This is the rich warmth of Charles' privileged and unhappy childhood and Erik feels as though he is savaging it, pressing Charles to the patterned quilts and pounding him into it as he laughs and writhes and urges Erik on. Outside, across the green, the gigantic satellite dish is missing, and Erik feels disoriented and angry and vindictive when he finally comes, his arms and elbows sunk into a familiar-unfamiliar bed and a stranger's fey-touched laughter in his ears. 

"This is another dimension, actually," Charles murmurs, when they disentangle; he sits up rumpled and soiled on the bed, his smile rueful and secretive, and now Erik notices the other suits and clothes lined up in the wardrobe, too large for Charles; the books in German and Polish stacked against the window, _that_ coin, forgotten on the side table. 

"Is it?" Erik challenges, and Charles merely smiles; he uncurls to his feet, dressed again in his untidy shirt. There's a steel wheelchair there, probably specially designed by Hank, judging by its beautiful symmetry and elegant lines, and Charles settles down in it, lifting his feet to the footplate and leaning back against the backrest, the calf straps uncurling to fit themselves in place even as the dream-memory-vision pulls itself apart. 

He wakes breathless and unsettled and soiled, and he stumbles over to the hotel's bathroom, gasping and shaking. The shower is too hot over his shoulders as he rests his back against the warming tiles, fists clenched. It's a long time before Erik finally rubs his face with a sharp jerk of his palm and straightens up. Tomorrow, he'll wear the helmet to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have questions/ideas/ficbunnies/etc, I'm on twitter @manic_intent and tumblr at manic-intent.tumblr.com :)


End file.
